With new tank items being introduced on patch 12.22, League of Legends players were fearful that preseason 13 would usher in a new tank meta. Those fears may have been realized.
The phrase, “tank meta”, is one that carries a lot of weight when it comes to MOBAs. These metas are generally characterized by tanky, unkillable behemoths dominating the meta and leaving any character that isn’t focused around raw DPS in the dust.
While it may be too early to tell whether or not we’re in for a lengthy tank meta following the items implemented ahead of Season 13, one thing’s for sure: on the current patch, tanks that get a lead are unkillable.
There are counters to tanks, champions that can shred through health and pump out true damage. However, even with those champions on your side, some tanks are too big to die. And one of the new items is the source of the problem.
Tanks get a bad rap, but not all items are causing problems
Radiant Virtue and Jak’Sho seem to be well balanced at this point, as well as Rod of Ages. These items certainly aren’t where the issue lies.
While RoA gives tankiness and damage to AP damage dealers willing to wait out its passive, its lack of protections makes that health easy to shred. Radiant Virtue and Jak’Sho both grant some strong sustain, but it’s nothing that can’t be handled.
Plus, the fact that neither of these items give you any additional damage stats makes them a strong accompaniment to other damage items rather than an all-in-one method to becoming a raid boss.
The root of LoL preseason 13’s tank problem
The problem with tanks is one item: Heartsteel. This infinite health stacking item has given even more power to tanks like Cho’Gath and Sion that can already stack health infinitely. By making these tanks’ win condition that much easier to achieve, there are tanks with 10,000+ HP wreaking havoc on the Rift.
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There are many clips out there of Cho’Gath and Sion players asserting their dominance by dancing in front of their enemies while they regen faster than the enemy ADC can damage them, but this clip from redditor GoverGames encapsulates just how much 1v5 potential tanks have in the emerging meta.
Gover showed off his game-winning method of, as the top comment on the post puts it, “frontdooring”. Even with his entire team dead, the lone Sion ran through the entire enemy team and smacked their Nexus just enough to get the win.
Sion is already tanky, but, in this clip, Heartsteel is granting Sion more permanent max health than his passive is. The two combined give him a whopping 4,141 additional HP, putting his health bar over 10k. A health bar that only grows as he stacks the Heartsteel passive more and more through the fight.
That HP combined with the damage scaling of Titanic Hydra and Gargoyle’s Stoneplate do more than make Sion tanky: They make him a legitimate damage threat with almost 400 AD.
With the root of the problem being one item, this could be fixed before Season 13 is officially released. It’s hard to say how strong Radiant Virtue and Jak’Sho are in the grand scheme of things due to Heartsteel being a better purchase almost all the time, so even a nerf to the root of the current problem could still leave us in a tank meta.
For more info on all the items added ahead of Season 13, you can read our full guide here.